Study on Asian American in Global Cities

LOS ANGELES (Oct. 1, 2012) — A collection of essays examines Asian American experiences in global cities through comparative studies of Los Angeles and New York, where more than a quarter of the United States’ Asian American population currently resides.

The publication was produced by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center’s Asian American Pacific Islander Nexus Journal: Policy, Practice and Community Special Issue on Los Angeles and New York. Guest editors Dr. Paul M. Ong (UCLA) and Dr. Tarry Hum (CUNY’s Queens College and Graduate Center) assembled the journal participants.

“The comparative approach offers great analytical potential because it can generate insights into what phenomena transcend regions and patterns that are produced by factors and forces common to Asian Americans regardless of location and fundamental global-city processes,” stated the two guest editors in a news release.

In Howard Shih and Melany De La Cruz-Viesca’s resource paper they present an overview of the similarities and differences between the Asian American experiences in New York and Los Angeles through an historical overview of immigration legislation and an analysis of recent demographic, economic, political, and spatial data from the U.S. Bureau of the Census.

Susan Nakaoka’s article on Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo and Lena Sze’s article on New York’s Chinatown both examine the politics of place and neighborhood change in two historic ethnic enclaves. Both Nakaoka and Sze describe current economic development strategies and argue for a conceptual framing of these enclave neighborhoods as a cultural home space in an effort to preserve and sustain ethnic places.

In C.N. Le’s research article, he brings attention to immigrant small business ownership and compares the self-employment outcomes of entrepreneurial Asian ethnic groups in New York and Los Angeles, noting their interethnic and generational differences. He offers timely policy recommendations to facilitate a shift of Asian American entrepreneurship toward professional service activities that reflect the demographic changes within the Asian American community and the ongoing dynamics of globalization.

Ariella Rotramel’s practitioner’s essay, “We Make the Spring Rolls, They Make Their Own Rules: Filipina Domestic Workers’ Fight for Labor Rights in New York City and Los Angeles,” looks at the experiences of Filipina domestic workers and the concentration of transnational workers in low-wage employment, and highlights the organizing tactics and strategies used by Filipina activists to advance worker’s rights in New York.

In a practitioner essay by Benji Chang and Juhyung Harold Lee, the authors focus on the role of public education in both Los Angeles’s and New York’s Chinatowns, and examine how community-based public schools can promote a holistic vision and approach for student achievement among Asian immigrant youth.

Lastly, Robert Chao Romero and Kevin Escudero Lam’s research article entitled, “‘Asian Latinos’ and the U.S. Census,” expands on Asian American ethnic diversity by uncovering census data on the small and often-overlooked “mixed” population of Asian and Latino ancestry. This article examines several policy implications related to Asian Latino coalition building and undocumented immigrant advocacy.

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